The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers --
always alert to opportunities that threaten the well-being of the Great Lakes
ecosystem and the people who depend upon it for their livelihoods and drinking
water -- has selected Cleveland for its latest misadventure.

The Corps proposed last December to dump contaminated Cuyahoga River dredge at
various sites in Lake Erie, one of which is just west of the intakes for the Cleveland municipal water treatment plants that serve hundreds of thousands of residents.

The plan prompted Maggie Rogers, water
quality manager for the city, to state in a written comment to the Corps:
"Cleveland Water remains opposed to any disposal options that could degrade our
source water quality."

Especially if those disposal optionsare based on protocols
that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency described as "contrary to the
best available science."

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The Corps remains blissfully confident
that the "dredged material meets Federal contaminant determination guidelines,"
even though the Ohio Environmental Council argues such a proposal "needlessly [puts] Ohioans' health and the health of Lake Erie at risk from toxic
pollutants."

Open-lake dredge dumping, according to the
Corps, is cost-effective.

"It
is not prudent use of taxpayer dollars to place the material" in a
confined-disposal facility, a Corps spokesman wrote in an email.

To heck with the consequences. To heck with the fact that while it pushes open-lake dredge dumping, the Corps is dragging its feet on alternatives that the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority is eager to explore.

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